Results tagged “creativity”

via The Universal Traveler

From the PSFK Conference NYC, Clay Shirky shares what's he learned about creativity by watching creatives (about 26 minutes long).

I love how he describes the program at ITP where he's an associate professor:

It's an interdisciplinary program. It's about half engineers and techies who care about human factors. It's about half artists and designers who aren't afraid of machines.

If I was entering college right now, this would totally be where I'd be going.

John Cleese - a lecture on Creativity

via Brain Pickings

Co.Design: Science Says Creativity And Dishonesty Go Hand-In-Hand

A recent article in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology makes the claim that creativity walks hand in hand with loose ethics. Francesca Gino of Harvard University and Dan Ariely of Duke University conducted a series of experiments, in which they asked subjects to complete various ethically ambiguous tasks. The result: Not only do naturally creative people cheat more than uncreative people, subjects cajoled into thinking outside of the box become cheaters, too. This suggests that the creative process isn't just tied to dishonest behavior; it actually enables it--troubling news at a time when the corporate world treats innovation as an impeachable moral good.

John Gertner for the NYTimes on Bell Labs:

So how can we explain how one relatively small group of scientists and engineers, working at Bell Labs in New Jersey over a relatively short span of time, came out with such an astonishing cluster of new technologies and ideas? They invented the future, which is what we now happen to call the present. And it was not by chance or serendipity. They knew something. But what?

The guy who was responsible for creating the creative culture was Mervin Kelly.

How did he do it?

One element of his approach was architectural. He personally helped design a building in Murray Hill, N.J., opened in 1941, where everyone would interact with one another. Some of the hallways in the building were designed to be so long that to look down their length was to see the end disappear at a vanishing point. Traveling the hall's length without encountering a number of acquaintances, problems, diversions and ideas was almost impossible. A physicist on his way to lunch in the cafeteria was like a magnet rolling past iron filings.

Sounds like another building from an institution known for creativity and innovation, the original MIT Media Lab building (via):

The Lab, which has its origins in architecture (the founder of the Media Lab, Nicholas Negroponte, is an architect) draws upon the tradition of studio design critique; we have daily visits from our industry partners and other practitioners with whom we engage in an authentic critical dialogue about the work. In this exchange, the work is discussed within a broader context -- ideas (and prototypes) are exchanged, improvements and alternatives suggested. We then advance to the third phase of the innovation cycle -- iterate. Iteration within the Lab means returning to 'Step One' to push our ideas further. Iteration within our partners' organisations means taking a prototype towards real-world application. In both cases, we can learn from our mistakes (and successes).

How quickly you can switch your perception to see each can say a lot about how creative you are.

Over at Wired Science, Jonah Lehrer looks into how we identify good ideas:

I've always been fascinated by the failures of genius. Consider Bob Dylan. How did the same songwriter who produced Blood on the Tracks and Blonde on Blonde also conclude that Down in the Groove was worthy of release? Or what about Steve Jobs: what did he possibly see in the hockey puck mouse? How could Bono not realize that Spiderman was a disaster? And why have so many of my favorite novelists produced so many middling works?

A big part seems to lie in letting your ideas marinate in your head for a while to give you some distance and perspective.

Wishingful Thinking gives us 10 Ways the Workplace Crushes Creativity.

One study found that office distractions eat an average 2.1 hours a day. Another study, published in October 2005, found that employees spent an average of 11 minutes on a project before being distracted. After an interruption it takes them 25 minutes to return to the original task, if they do at all. People switch activities every three minutes, either making a call, speaking with someone in their cubicle, or working on a document.

Distractions are not just frustrating; they can be exhausting. By the time you get back to where you were, your ability to stay focused goes down even further as you have even less glucose available now. Change focus ten times an hour (one study showed people in offices did so as much as 20 times an hour), and your productive thinking time is only a fraction of what's possible.

When I read this, my immediate thought was all the external distractions I get (managers, clients), but there's just as many, if not more, self-imposed distractions to get rid of.

Checking Facebook, checking RSS feeds, checking Twitter, seeing if anyone new and cool is on Google Plus, responding to instant messages - these are all potential distractions (not everyone finds them irresistible to check) we have the ability to remove.

Why Leaders and Innovators Need Solitude to Do Good Work

Forty years of research on brainstorming shows that individuals produce more and better ideas than groups do. Studies also suggest that the path to excellence in many fields is not only to practice, but to practice alone. And creativity researchers have found that many highly creative people were shy and solitary in high school, and recall their adolescence with horror. (I explain all this in detail in my forthcoming book, QUIET: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking.)

This is one of many reasons that introverts -- who are more likely than others to carve out solitary time -- are often very creative, and make unexpectedly fine leaders.

While a different idea, this brings to mind having one decision maker on on a project versus design-by-committee. As anyone who's been on a project (design or otherwise) knows, when there isn't a go-to person and everyone's voice has to be heard and incorporated into the product, that product inevitably ends up a watered-down mess. Barely competent at many things, great at nothing.

Without play, there is no experimentation.

—Paul Rand

via this isn't happiness

Richard Florida on What Makes Nations Thrive:

Our results indicate that the factors that contribute to happiness differ in high- and low-income countries. In low-income nations (defined as those with less than $11,000 in per capita GDP), happiness turns on income. But it matters much less in high-income countries. In these countries, people are affluent enough to cover the basics which are essential to a base level of happiness. Two factors matters in particular over and above income in these more well-off nations. The first is the nature of the job market: people are happier in affluent nations where more of them work in knowledge-based, creative, and professional jobs and fewer work in blue-collar working class jobs. Values matter too, especially openness and tolerance toward ethnic and racial minorities and toward gay and lesbian people.

Instead of asking people directly how to be creative, they have examined the psychological conditions of creativity. It's like instead of looking directly at the sun to work out where it is, you watch the shadows thrown across the ground.

- From How to Be Creative by Jeremy Dean